Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Medieval Futurity: Essays For The Future Of A Queer Medieval Studies, Will Rogers, Christopher Michael Roman

New Queer Medievalisms

This collection of essays asks contributors to take the capaciousness of the word "queer" to heart in order to think about what medieval queers would have looked like and how they may have existed on the margins and borders of dominant, normative sexuality and desire. The contributors work with recent trends in queer medieval studies, blending together modern concepts of sexuality and desire with the queer configurations of eroticism, desire, and materiality as they might have existed for medieval audiences.

Gower´S Queer Poetics In The Mirour De L'Omme, María Bullón-Fernández

Accessus

Gower's Queer Poetics in the Mirour de l'Omme

In the Mirour de l’Omme John Gower describes the allegorical Sins as both deceitful and “hermafrodrite” and later confesses to having engaged in queer practices in his earlier courtly poetry. Gower’s confession and his association of the Sins with intersexuality, I will argue, do not entail ultimately a rejection of queer poetics. In his Life of the Virgin Mary, the final part of the Mirour, Gower deploys a different kind of queer poetics, one that acknowledges the indeterminacies of language but still seeks to stabilize meaning, while intertwining male and female.

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.56, No.1, Summer 2020

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.55, No.2, Winter 2019

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.55, No.2, Winter 2019

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Performing Mystical Union In Mechthild Of Magdeburg’S The Flowing Light Of The Godhead, Jessi C. Piggott

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Thirteenth-century mystic Mechthild of Magdeburg characterizes her revelations not as visions but as greetings, a term she uses to encompass gestures, verbal exchanges, and experiences perceived through multiple senses. Mechthild’s mysticism is thus best understood as a series of scenarios, the embodied nature of which cannot be fully contained by text. Using a performance studies approach, this paper identifies the traces of performance—textual prompts inextricable from their (explicit or implied, real or imagined) completion in physical and vocal acts—that can be found throughout Mechthild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead. How does Mechthild’s use of performance repertoires convey the mystical …

Talking Back: Sodomy Laws And Transgressive Subjectivity In Medieval Venice, Alex Baldassano

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Urban Italian law, by the fifteenth-century, would become particularly aggressive in comparison to the rest of Europe not only in prosecuting sodomy, but also in implementing the threatened capital punishment. The 1354 Venetian court case of Rolandinus/a Ronchaia, in the century leading up to the officialization of the law, both exemplifies this trend and yet also stands out as unique because of the subject’s gender presentation; the case seeks to resolve whether or not this person, perceived either as ambiguously gendered or as a man dressed as a woman, can be convicted of committing sodomy or prostitution. Ronchaia, however, is …

Disordered Women? The Hospital Sisters Of Mainz And Their Late Medieval Identities, Lucy C. Barnhouse

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Debates over the identity of women’s religious communities have exercised historians no less than late medieval canonists and officials. Even as the legal regulation of such communities increased, so, paradoxically, did the diversity of forms that such communities took. Although these trends have been the subject of much historical attention, the division of mixed-gender hospital communities which occurred across Europe in the thirteenth century has not hitherto been integrated into such studies. I attempt to redress this lacuna by examining the contested religious identity of the hospital sisters of Mainz. Forced to leave the mixed-gender staff of the city’s Heilig …

Experiencing Authority: The Wife Of Bath's Deaf Ear And The Flawed Exegesis Of St. Jerome, David Pedersen

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Although Chaucer’s Wife of Bath is among English literature’s most analyzed characters, scholars have been remarkably uninterested in one of her most unique traits: her deaf ear. Despite the fact that this disability is mentioned more often than any of her other physical characteristics, more even than the regularly discussed gap in her teeth, scholars have rarely spent more than a paragraph addressing the deafness, if they do so at all. This is no doubt due in part to the fact that scholars have assumed a symbolic link between the Wife’s inability to hear and her problematic scriptural exegesis, and …

Melusine, Invisible Leadership And The Future (In The Past), Jan Shaw

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

This paper considers the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine from the late Middle English romance Melusine. By invoking contemporary leadership theory, this paper identifies leadership maneuvers in Melusine that are similar to those often practiced by women today, but the discourses of gender identity then ultimately render Melusine’s leadership invisible, just as leadership discourses today often render female leadership invisible. By uncovering the operation of “invisible” leadership in the figure of Melusine and identifying commonalities with the leadership of women today, this paper aims to improve our understanding of the contemporary problem of the marked …

Mechthild Of Magdeburg, Hadewijch Of Brabant, And Marguerite Of Porete: The Annihilation Of The Soul And The Challenge To Church Authority, Ashley Odebiyi

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Late Medieval Sexual Badges As Sexual Signifiers: A Material Culture Reappraisal, Sarah Hinds

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The French Of Medieval England: Essays In Honour Of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, S. C. Kaplan

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Witchcraft Sourcebook, Holle Canatella

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Peace And Penance In Late Medieval Italy, Janine Larmon Peterson

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Sight Of Semiramis: Medieval And Early Modern Narratives Of The Babylonian Queen, Victoria E. H. Walker

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Conduct Becoming: Good Wives And Husbands In The Later Middle Ages, Tovah Bender

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Imperial Ladies Of The Ottonian Dynasty: Women And Rule In Tenth-Century Germany, Janna Bianchini

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Fragments For A History Of Vanishing Humanism, Heather Blatt

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Her Father's Daughter: Gender, Power, And Religion In The Early Spanish Kingdoms, Jessica A. Boon

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Imagined Communities: Constructing Collective Identities In Medieval Europe, Charles-Louis Morand-Metivier

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

"Le Bone Florence Of Rome": A Critical Edition And Facing Translation Of A Middle English Romance Analogous To Chaucer's "Man Of Law's Tale", Brendan O'Connell

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Royal And Elite Households In Medieval And Early Modern Europe: More Than Just A Castle, Elena Woodacre

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Mind To Mirror To Life: Sexual Health From A Body Positive Lens, Kacey Richardson

Honors Theses

Body image and sexual health are inextricably linked. It is crucial for college students to understand the importance of body image within sexual health in order to capture the full scope of sexual well-being, although most existing sexuality education resources for college students fail to make this connection. This thesis demonstrates the necessity for comprehensive sexual health education that incorporates a focus on body image to promote the health and wellness of college students. Using an intersectional outlook, the thesis evaluates existing resources and presents the contents of an original workshop titled “Mind to Mirror to Life: Sexual Health from …

Convents And Novices In Early Modern English Dramatic Works: In Medias Res, Vanessa L. Rapatz

Late Tudor and Stuart Drama

Convents and Novices in Early Modern English Dramatic Texts: In Medias Res attends to the religious, social, and material changes in England during the century following the Reformation, specifically examining how the English came to terms with the meanings of convents and novices even after they disappeared from the physical and social landscape. In five chapters, it traces convents and novices across a range of dramatic texts that refuse easy generic classification: problem plays such as Shakespeare's Measure for Measure; Marlowe's comic tragedy The Jew of Malta; Margaret Cavendish's closet dramas The Convent of Pleasure and The Religious …

La Compiuta Donzella Of Florence (Ca. 1260): The Complete Poetry, Fabian Alfie

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

Translation into English of extant poems of the thirteenth-century Italian poet La Compiuta Donzella of Florence with poems addressed to her by Mastro Torrigiano and a letter to her from Guittone d'Arezzo.

Undiagnosing Iphis: How The Lack Of Trauma In John Gower’S “Iphis And Iante” Reinforces A Subversive Trans Narrative, C Janecek

Accessus

Trauma has long played a role in queer narratives, including Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”, which many scholars have interpreted as reinforcing heteronormativity through Iphis’s transformation into a man in order to marry Ianthe. However, I argue that John Gower’s rendition of this tale reframes Iphis as a trans man and allows us to understand the poem as a subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of gender. Utilizing Judith Butler’s writing on the medicalization of gender, I explore the relationship between trauma, performance, and gender within the Ovidian and Gowerian versions of Iphis.

The Afterward: Sylvia Rivera And Marsha P. Johnson In The Medieval Imaginary, Joy Ellison, Nicholas Hoffman

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Studying Gender In Medieval Europe: Historical Approaches, Caroline Dunn

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Meditations On The Life Of Christ: The Short Italian Text, Anne Spear

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.